The original plan was to install the newest version of Ubuntu on that machine but I ran into the infamous installer bug. I might go back and try again and use the work around. This machine seems determined not to take an install no matter what.

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Yes booting from a live cd will work. If you do not have your hdd encrypted you can open the grub file as root user in the live cd and make the changes.

But your error sounds more like it is a error with X detecting a wrong resolution of your monitor. You can google Xorg.config and create this file also in the live cd. Just enter the resolution and color depth you have in your monitor. Maybe vesa does not work with the rage card. you can ceck this by coping the Xorg.conf from the working live CD to the HDD.

Also remember ALWAYS make a backup file of the files you change.
You can look in the Archwiki or the Ubuntuuser wiki for the command line options for grub.